Muti Nation (16 page)

There hadn’t been time for me to investigate the recent strange occurrences in my house. There’s never enough time. Still, as I walk to the kettle to fill my caffeine need, I realise putting an investigation of my own house on hold might not have been the wisest decision.

A loud crash resonates from my bedroom.

I spin around to face the hallway, fearful of another unwanted encounter sneaking up on me. Nothing stirs for some time.

With the back door still open behind me, I consider the variables. A slight gust might have slipped into the house, winded through the hallway and into my bedroom and knocked something over.

Perhaps. Improbable, but maybe.

I move towards the hallway, cautious and silent.

I reach the door and peer around the corner.

My heart races, my breathing becomes shallow, fear curdles the gastric juices in my empty stomach.

Looking similar to church pews, the morning after a big rugby game, the corridor is empty. I consider calling Howlen then for backup but I forgot my cell phone on my nightstand.

I slip into the gloom with one shoulder pressed against the cool wall. The only light comes from my bedside lamp at the farthest end of the corridor. Focusing on the strip of light, I place one foot in front of the other. Slowly, ever so slowly, I make it past the spare bedroom which acts as a home office-slash-library. Further on, I pass the bathroom where knock-off Italian tiles and taps gleam. Another bedroom across the hallway, the guest bedroom, stands silently with its door closed. That door is always closed; I don’t know why I prefer it like this.

My bedroom is a few steps away but I pause. Listening, waiting, I keep watch of the yellow light in the open door. Some gut feeling keeps me from approaching.

A shadow flickers across the floor, moving with such speed it could’ve easily been a trick of the eye. Uniting in terror, my heart stops beating for a second, I suppress a scream as my throat constricts my vocal cords, and an adrenaline shock runs through my body.

Do I run away like a normal, rational human being? No, I do not. I tell myself to calm down. I rationalise the fleeting shadow as a creation of my overactive imagination. I’d like to think myself inventive enough to come up with something better than shadows though.

Courage, but mostly curiosity, spurs me onward.

I scan the ceiling. Then my gaze drops to eye-level, and I gasp.

Crudely shredded strips of fabric—once being a duvet, bedsheets, curtains, and even my designer clothing—are strewn across the floor. Feathers lie lifelessly wherever they fell, after something with vicious claws ripped through my pillows. The crash originated from my dressing table being thrown across the room and into my wardrobe. The force used to accomplish this broke the dressing table into pieces and left the wardrobe doors hanging precariously from their hinges.

Nothing but pure, unadulterated hatred could’ve incited the devastation I behold.

Rushing forward, ignoring the splinters stabbing into my bare feet, I grab and tear and search through the debris for my cell phone. Whatever’s penetrated my house is still here, watching—biding its time for whatever nefarious task it’s been summoned to perform. I feel its watchful, patient gaze, and I fear it. Oh, how I fear it.

By the time I see a glint of hard plastic tucked between the mattress and nightstand, I’m trembling so much I can’t operate the damn thing. My fingers keep slipping across the touch-screen, dialling incoherent numbers.

“Fuck,” I growl, annoyed with how technology has devolved to make it almost impossible for a distraught person to make a call in an emergency.

Eventually I dial Howlen’s number. His phone is ringing when I push the cell phone against my ear.

“Esmé,” he answers, wide awake.

I revert to speaking in Afrikaans even though my family predominantly speaks English now.

“I don’t understand you, May,” Howlen says.

“Come over,” I blurt out, desperate. “Please.”

Chapter 19

The correct name of the dumping site is the Ollie Deneyschen Tunnel, although locals simply refer to it as the Daspoort Tunnel.

According to high school history teachers in the area, who sometimes touch the subject of local history, the late councillor A.P. Deneyschen had commissioned the tunnel in the late 1960s, after realising the Iscor mineworkers who resided in Hercules travelled a long way to work. The tunnel was thus built, connecting Claremont and Danville, to shorten their journey. It took forty months to complete, cost R1.7 million to build, and was officially opened to the public by the then Mayor of Pretoria, Mr. G.J. Malherbe, on 10 August 1972. With a length of 537 meters and a width of 11.6 meters, the Daspoort Tunnel handles almost six thousand vehicles per day.

Even though he knew them by heart, these details are inconsequential to the killer.

The most relevant fact concerns the Daspoort Tunnel’s ventilation shaft.

Positioned in the middle of the tunnel, the shaft measures approximately 4.57 meters in diameter, and runs about fifty-five meters between the tunnel and the top of the mountain.

Without the shaft someone can succumb in this carbon monoxide funnel. With it, though, the killer can get to work on making a name for himself…globally.

As he pushed the half-rusted wheelbarrow across the rocky terrain, Abraham Amin’s stiff corpse shifted position. Abraham’s entrails didn’t spill, but he grew tired of balancing the bastard on one wheel the whole time. The steep incline of the mountain didn’t help either. Nevertheless, he kept moving, kept racing against the rising sun, ignoring his burning shins and calves and thighs.

The thick, long bungee cord, acquired online, was coiled tightly and placed atop Abraham’s leaking corpse. Shit and gore had already seeped between the fibres of the cord, defiling the expensive purchase.

C’est la vie
, he thought.

Skeletal trees, with next to no foliage, moved by as the wheelbarrow rolled up the mountain. Past boulders and rocks, over gravelly dirt, around mini bluffs, and up he went. His body protested when the wheelbarrow was parked near the ventilation shaft, even if the whole drive, manoeuvring, and climb lasted less than fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.

He looked around, searching for any witnesses. Squatters, the homeless, and criminals frequented the area, as he well knew. With nobody in sight, he pulled his backpack off his shoulders and went to work hammering hooks into various predetermined places around the shaft.

The sun rose. Traffic buzzed from either side of the mountain. Time was running out. When everything was in place, he found the harness in his backpack and walked back to the wheelbarrow. Then he wrestled to get it onto Abraham’s body, rigor mortis making everything more difficult. Next, he pushed the wheelbarrow closer and hooked the bungee cords on to the harness.

Slick with sweat, he strapped Abraham into position. He couldn’t care less if he left DNA evidence behind. Leaving behind evidence wasn’t a major concern when his ultimate goal was to be found. Of course, he wanted to be found on his terms.

Esmé would need all the help she could get. Not that his DNA would get her anywhere. He pinned a hastily scrawled note to Abraham’s shirt which would hopefully inspire her to stop fucking around and play along.

“Come on, Abe,” he groaned, grabbing hold of Abraham’s arm, and lifting him over his shoulder.

Careful not to get tangled up in the cords, he dropped Abraham’s corpse near the edge of the shaft, before straightening up the area. Untangled cords were checked over one final time. Tangled cords were quickly sorted out because the aesthetics of the scene would be ruined if Abraham didn’t fall exactly right. The backpack was packed up and pulled on, before he hid the wheelbarrow in some underbrush a short walk away.

When he returned, his gaze lingered on Abraham for a while. Glazed-over eyes stared back, judging him even from the afterlife.

“Oh, Abraham, I really don’t appreciate your gravely admonishments,” he said, looking at his wristwatch. 07:06 a.m. “Perfect.”

With a scuffed boot, he nudged Abraham closer to the edge, centimetre by centimetre, until a last mighty shove would do the trick. “
Auf wiedersehen, Herr
Amin.”

The only sign of his success was the muted chaos that ensued.

Abraham Amin’s killer walked back the way he came, unbothered by an instinctive urge to flee the scene. Brakes screeched. Fast moving metal collided against fast moving metal. Glass shattered. Vehicles honked. Then silence, a momentous quiet between tragedy and realisation. It stretched on beautifully. Then the screams started.

And it was the most glorious sound he had ever heard.

Chapter 20

I sit amidst the wreckage of my room plucking through the contents of my underwear drawer.

“Every single piece of lace clothing I own is gone.” I giggle hysterically as I throw cotton lingerie—the unattractive ones women wear when the laundry’s piled neck-high—over my shoulder. “Every goddamn G-string, gone.” I look to where Howlen stands staring at the destruction. “It’s hilarious,” I say.

“What happened in here? What happened to
you
?” Howlen takes a step forward, but hesitates. “Jesus, what happened to your face, May?”

“Oh, you know, an unseen preternatural entity decided to turn my bedroom into its lair. The perverted fucker, seemingly, also has a thing for lace underwear.” I glower at the ceiling, as if whatever did this lives up there. It quite possibly does live in the space between the roof and the ceiling but I can’t be certain until I actually grow a pair and investigate. “As for what happened to me, my face, and whatever else might not look especially
rouge noir
as usual, well, I almost got killed because of you. I told you to shut up, but did you listen? Nope.”

“Are you okay?”

“Do I look even remotely okay?” I ask, lying back into the fabric and feather nest. “I ache all over. I’ll probably be slammed with a lawsuit because I beat the living shit out of the guy who tried to shoot me. I’m tired and I’m also now sharing my house with God knows what. Not to mention, you basically dumped me last night via text message. It’s really the least of my problems, I know, but your timing needs improvement.” Sighing, I pushed myself onto my elbows. “On the upside, my shoes survived. I would have been inconsolable if they’d been…” I gesture to the room around me. “You know?”

“I was under the impression you’d spoken with Father Gabriel over this entity long ago.”

“Of course I spoke with Father Gabriel. Our meeting was scheduled between having my manicure done and my bikini line waxed,” I say, sarcasm oozing from each word.

“There’s no need to be snide,” Howlen says, picking up a broken drawer. He turns it over, to evaluate the damage, before placing it on my bed. “Shall I call off work and help you?”

“Gramps won’t approve if both of us took the day off,” I answer.

“Perhaps if you told him about your current predicament—”

“He’d tell me,
I told you so
, and I wouldn’t blame him,” I interrupt Howlen. “No, he’s already pissed off about what happened last night. There’s no need to prove my incompetence again.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself,” he says, taking a seat beside me on the floor.

I want to rest my head on his shoulder but my courage levels have reached zero. In front of me lies my favourite tube of lipstick, a shade of garnet red, which I pick up to inspect.

“How was your date?” I ask.

Howlen sighs. “I grabbed a drink with the lab technician working on our trace evidence, fishing for answers. Harry isn’t exactly what I’d call date material.”

My forehead pulls into a frown as I turn to face him. “Immature much?”

He meets my gaze, mirroring my expression. “Says the cheater.”

“Cheater?” I ask. “I may not be the most conventional woman, but I’ve never cheated on any of my lovers. Juggling multiple partners, even when it comes to casual sex, sounds like too much work.”

Howlen’s phone bleeps with a message before he can respond.

He glances at the screen and his shoulders drop. “You better get dressed, we’ve got another body.”

~

The Daspoort Tunnel connects two main roads; Transoranje Road and Bremer Street, leading from Pretoria West towards Pretoria North. This tunnel is a lifeline for many. Thousands of vehicles drive through the gloomy underpass once or twice on a daily basis, and brave pedestrians—schoolchildren, for the most part—walk through soot and grime to reach their destinations. Though the tunnel isn’t especially long, the accidents that occur there tend to be fatal. Most drivers, however, would rather gamble with their lives in a death trap, than take a pricy detour around the mountain. Pedestrians also prefer trying their luck with speeding vehicles than getting killed—or worse—by the “mountain men.”

When Howlen and I arrive near the tunnel, it’s a circus. Roads on either side of the tunnel are congested with vehicles and people. A traffic officer tries to divert cars towards alternative roads but it’s slow-going. Frustrations flare and tempers rise as the heat of the day increases. Howlen directs his car onto the sidewalk and drives up to the traffic officer. After a quick repartee we are waved on. Howlen’s chosen a difficult route to the tunnel, but there is no way around it.